In an increasingly industrialized world, the byproducts and waste products of civilization present increasing hazards to a safe and useable environment. Contamination of rivers, lakes and oceans frequently occur because of "spills" of crude oil, refined products, fish oils, vegetable oils and other essentially fluid materials which, because of the differences in density surface tension, or other physical properties will, for relatively long periods of time, remain near the surface of or float upon the polluted waterway.
Inherently, a process or device for removing such pollutants should have utility in connection with controlled industrial separation processes where fluids of different viscosities, densities, and/or surface tension characteristics are to be separated one from the other. Though this application will be couched mainly in terms of removing "pollutants," it should be understood that its scope and intent is broad enough to include and cover separation of fluids of whatever kind that lend themselves to the mechanism described.
Removing materials from other fluid surfaces has heretofore been approached from a number of directions and has included the use of chemical dispersants, physical removal by mechanical means, the use of burning agents, the use of floating or sinking absorbent materials, and the like. For example, straw is sometimes employed to absorb oil from a water surface and the straw is later processed by burning, thus casting combustion byproducts (pollutants) into the atmosphere. The use of chemical dispersants is likewise usually undesirable since these materials often have an adverse effect upon the ecological balance of the environments in which they are used.
The aforementioned patent to Yates made a great step forward in providing an easily transportable and highly effective mechanism for recovering usable oil, thus allowing the oil to be recycled rather than transducing the pollution into another environment, e.g. the atmosphere or bottoms of bodies of water. There are instances such as foul weather environments in heavy seas or high wave situations where the Yates mechanism is not completely effective where for example, the roll or pitch of the recovery unit is not independent of supporting vehicle. Also, in extremely high wave situations water may enter into the trough area which in the Yate's device is located in the center of the discs and closer to the mean water surface.